1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a connector adapter for interfacing between a card connector and a printed circuit board, and especially to a connector adapter used for electrically connecting a PCMCIA connector to a printed circuit board.
2. The Prior Art
PCMCIA card connectors have become popular in portable computers. Normally the connector has right angled tails directly soldered on a printed circuit board. However, some of the tails may be twisted during simultaneous insertion in corresponding pad holes of the printed circuit board due to the large number thereof. A spacer is further provided to isolate and position each contact tail to ensure correct insertion. However, the effect of the spacer is not satisfactory because it is laborious to fix the large dimensioned PCMCIA connector with a jig during soldering. Therefore, an adapter is provided which is soldered to the printed circuit board before the PCMCIA connector is inserted into the adapter without directly soldering the PCMCIA connector on the printed circuit board.
Referring to FIG. 1, a conventional adapter 50 is soldered on a printed circuit board 5 for receiving a PCMCIA connector 56 having a shielding 55. The adapter 50 has a body portion 51 engaged with a metal cover 52 between which a slot 59 is defined for receiving the shielding 55 of the PCMCIA connector 56. The metal cover 52 defines an opening 53 and an elastic tab 54 formed by stamping for engaging with the shielding 55 of the PCMCIA connector 56 when the latter is received in the slot 59. However, the metal cover 52 is apt to deform, as shown in FIG. 2, either during the stamping procedure or the configuring procedure for engaging with the body portion 51, thereby adversely affecting the engagement of the adapter 50 with the shielding 55 of the PCMCIA connector 56 and hindering the shielding effect of the overall configuration.
Hence, it is requisite to provide a new adapter structure which can provide a better shielding effect than the conventional one.